


Lighting A Shooting Star, I'll Give You My Galaxy

by teenuviel1227



Series: Commissions July-August 2018 [1]
Category: Day6 (Band)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, bestfriends to lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-06-10 06:22:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15285600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teenuviel1227/pseuds/teenuviel1227
Summary: Jae and Brian have been bestfriends for the longest time--and now, after years of being there for each other, it finally feels like things could blossom into something more.





	1. A Small Kiss When They Were Younger

**Author's Note:**

  * For [snotty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/snotty/gifts).



> This is a commission for snotty or @2basc0 on Twitter and is based on their amazing (and amazingly soft) Jaehyungparkian art thread: https://twitter.com/2basc0/status/1013984289254494208?s=21
> 
> Thank you for trusting me with this, snotty, and I hope you like it!
> 
> Title of the fic is from Bobbalgan4’s Galaxy; chapter titles are from the captions of snotty’s work.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was only a kiss, it was only a kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is based off of this particular panel: https://twitter.com/2basc0/status/1013998921667022850?s=19
> 
> Twitter/CC: @teenuviel1227

When it happens, both of them are caught off-guard but in different ways: Brian’s always known that he would like kissing Jae, would love kissing him in fact, which is precisely why he’d avoided it every chance he got--always slept with his back to Jae on sleepovers, never joined games of Spin The Bottle when Jae was sitting in the circle, stayed the hell away from anyone so much as mentioning  _ Pepero  _ at birthday parties. Jae, on the other hand, feels like some part of him’s short-circuited, like he’s been told some great improbability like aliens existing or dinosaurs being brought back from DNA encased in amber is real and moreover, has landed in his lap--or well, on his lips. It isn’t that he didn’t think that he’d enjoy kissing Brian--it was just that he hadn’t even thought there was any way that it could ever happen so he hadn’t given it much thought, had pushed it out of his head the moment that it popped up unbidden the first time when they were in third grade doing homework at his house, Brian’s lips pursed thoughtfully as he helped Jae figure out a math problem. 

It happens as a dare on Dowoon’s thirteenth birthday party, both of them caught off-guard. Neither of them know that a game’s even going on--the parents are around so there isn’t any pilfered alcohol, just a giant empty 1.5L plastic bottle that they think Dowoon’s using to clobber people with for fun. Brian’s strumming the guitar, trying to sing a sultry  _ happy birthday to you  _ to Dowoon ala Marilyn Monroe and Jae’s sitting beside him, eyebrows furrowed in concentration as he struggles to get the comic strip off of a piece of Bazooka gum, the text balloon stuck to the big, bright pink square.

“Great,” Jae says, sighing. “I can’t eat the gum, I can’t read the comic. I’ll never know what happens next.”

Brian shakes his head, grinning. “If you eat anymore of those your insides will turn pink.” 

“I know that’s not true. And I’m not like you, Bri, I don’t  _ swallow _ the gum,” Jae rolls his eyes, but can’t deny the fact that he has chewed more than his fair share of gum today, knows that his tongue is bright pink. 

Brian shrugs. “I’ll eat pretty much anything--” 

“--aha!” Dowoon bops Brian on the head a little more forcefully than intended with the plastic bottle. “EL KABONG! I choose you, Kang Braaaatatatataaaaaaa!”

“Dude,” Brian says, rubbing the sore spot on his forehead. “What in the--”

“--I dare you to kiss Jae--”

“--what?”

Both of them leap off of the couch in surprise. Jae hopes to god that he isn’t blushing--which is what Brian’s doing right now, the apples of his cheeks flushed crimson. 

“No,” Jae says, shaking his head. “He doesn’t want to--”

“--are you drunk, Yoon Dowoon?” Brian asks in disbelief. “Did you steal a couple of cans from your Dad’s pantry again?”

“--you guys are no fun,” Dowoon says, frowning. “Everyone here’s been playing--”

“--playing  _ what _ ?” Jae asks pointedly, crossing his arms over his chest.

“El Kabong Dare or Dare, duh,” Dowoon replies. “I mean. We’ve all been classmates since we were infants, we all know each other’s secrets so what’s the point in asking Truth. And if my mom sees us spinning the bottle, she’ll kill me. So. I’ll just El Kabong whoever I feel like and dare them to do something.”

“Well,” Brian says, looking at his feet. “I mean--why would you dare me to do that--”

Dowoon snorts. “--I dunno, because it’s harmless and platonic anyway? That is unless--”

“--I’ll do it,” Brian says quickly, turning to face Jae. 

Jae’s eyes widen, his eyebrows shooting up into his hairline.

“But you said you didn’t want to--” 

“--no,” Brian says carefully, eyes drifting down to Jae’s lips, stained hot pink from the gum, suddenly looking invitingly soft. “No,  _ you  _ said I didn’t want to.”

“Oh,” Jae says, swallowing, his heart pounding. “Oh. Well. I mean. Yeah. It’s Dowoon’s birthday and it’s platonic and--”

“--we can move on if you guys want, jeez, I didn’t know this was going to be a debate on the welfare state’s pros and cons--” Dowoon rolls his eyes.

“--shut up, Dowoonie.” 

Brian tugs softly at the sleeve of Jae’s oversized sweater and pulls him closer. Jae lets out a small gasp as Brian puts one hand on his waist, the other on the back of his nape, pulling him down, closing the space between them--it’s a flurry of eyelashes, the tips of their noses touching, warm breath grazing lips until they’re kissing, soft. Jae finds himself putting his arms around Brian’s shoulders, ruffling his hair, enjoying the way that Brian’s heart is thudding just as hard, as quickly as his own. Brian loses himself, finds himself pulling Jae closer, finds himself lost in the softness of Jae’s lips, the way that when the kiss deepens and Jae opens his mouth, both of them unsure what to do next, Jae tastes like sugar. 

It’s Jae who pulls away first, not sure what to do with his tongue, afraid about what other people might say. Brian blinks at the sudden loss of contact. They watch each other, both of them blushing like crazy, hands trembling.

“Damn,” Dowoon says. 

Everyone in the room is quiet, looking at them.

It’s Brian who recovers first, shoots everyone what he hopes is an easy grin and slaps Jae on the shoulder. 

“Good enough for your dare, Dowoonie?”

Jae feels a part of him swoon with relief, a bigger part of him flooding with disappointment. He takes a deep breath, decides to play along.  _ It was only a kiss. Brian’s kissed other people before. I’m sure he’s kissed other people before.  _

“Dude,” Dowoon says, looking for someone else to bonk. “I’m traumatized for life.” 

Jae and Brian sit back on the couch.

Brian glances at Jae, unable to bite back a smile.  _ He was my first kiss.  _

“We okay, Jae?”

Jae grins, slaps him on the back. 

“Of course. Why wouldn’t we be? No homo and all that, right.”

Brian feels his cheeks warm up again.

“Right.” 


	2. All The Other Firsts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Babe, you look so coooool.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is based off of this particular panel: https://twitter.com/2basc0/status/1014346810192736258?s=19
> 
> Twitter/CC: @teenuviel1227

There wasn’t really one moment that did it for them--no one instance where it hit them that they were in love with each other, no one moment which somehow all of the small rushes of feeling, all of the laughter and tears, all the whispered secrets between them all of these years built up to. There wasn’t a moment of reckoning, only the slow realization of that one, true, undeniable fact: Jae loves Brian, Brian loves Jae. Like all other things with them, it happens gradually, naturally, like two hands slipping into one another--it happens in the everyday things: the way that Jae doesn’t think twice about how he’s getting to school, knows that Brian will be by for him in his dad’s old van at exactly 7:16 in the morning, knows that the car will smell like hamburgers and Drakkar Noir from a sample spilled carelessly on the carpet back when Brian used to part-time as the perfume boy at the department store; it’s in the way that Brian might be on every imaginable team in school--the mathletes, the football team, the AV club--but turns down every offer that he gets to sit with the other kids, choosing instead to sit with Jae no matter what. It’s in the way that neither of them even have to question who to partner with in class because they take all their classes together if they can help it--and if they can’t, they wait for each other outside the other’s classroom sure as sunrise.

But later on, when they’re old and gray and have fallen asleep in each other’s arms more nights than either of them can count, when people ask them when they knew, when people ask them about that  _ moment _ , that golden instance--both of them point to the day with  the hair dye and the piercing gun. 

Today, they sit in Brian’s room, the windows open, all of the electric fans in the house turned up to maximum, the entire room stinking of bleach anyway. It’s two in the afternoon and Jae’s scalp is on fire--all of the online reviews said that the bleach wouldn’t sting, but the bleach  _ stings  _ like a motherfucker--despite the fact that they’ve already rinsed the bleach and the color out. Jae squints up at Brian, trying to make his expression out through the tears stinging his eyes from the harsh chemicals. Brian’s watching him, grinning as he gently towel-dries Jae’s hair. 

“Well?” Jae asks, Brian’s face finally coming into focus--he’s smiling and that’s got to be a good thing. “Verdict?”

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Brian says slowly. “But you’re so hot right now.” 

Jae laughs, his voice cracking. He adjusts his glasses, walks over to the mirror. When he and Brian had talked about Sophomore Year makeovers, Jae thought something more along the lines of moving from baggy shirts to more body-fitting sweaters or giving up his round glasses for horn-rimmed ones--so when Brian had suggested dying his hair platinum blonde and then having him punch holes in Brian’s ears with the needle gun that Dowoon pilfered from his job at the mall jewelry store, he’d been a bit skeptical, a little afraid. 

But now, standing in front of the mirror his eyes widen as he takes the image of himself in--because Brian’s right. 

Something about the pale blonde brings out the rosy undertone of his pale skin, brings out the pink in his lips, the line of his nose, his jaw. Brian grins, reaching up to brush a couple of strands of hair out of Jae’s eyes. Jae’s heart flutters at his touch--but he’s used to that by now, has had a lot of practice keeping still around Brian while his heart did other things, things out of his control. 

“There.”

Jae looks at himself in the mirror and grins, feeling handsome for what feels like the first time in his life. Of course, Brian’s always told him he was good looking, always goaded him on, but in his mind Brian was the handsome one, the daring one, the one to swoon and fawn over.

“Alright,” Jae says, taking the towel and tossing it at Brian, who catches it a moment too late, the fabric already hitting him square in the face. “Your turn.” 

Brian gulps, tries to keep his cool--but Jae can tell that he’s nervous, is doing that same smiling-while-looking-at-his-feet thing that he’d done when they’d kissed at Dowoon’s party all those years ago. 

Jae makes for Brian’s desk, tearing open a packet of the sterilized earrings, loading the gun. 

“Okay.” Brian frowns as he reluctantly sits down in the chair by the table, doing that pouty thing that Jae is a fool for. “Alright. Fine, my turn.”

“It doesn’t hurt as much as you’d think,” Jae says, he himself having taken advantage of Dowoon’s employee privileges, his left ear pierced, a silver cross dangling from it. “I swear.” 

“It’s a  _ gun _ for crying out loud,” Brian says, frowning. “Of course it’s going to hurt.”

Jae grins, soaking a cotton bud in antiseptic and rubbing Brian’s earlobe with it. Brian’s vulnerability is one of the things that he loves most about Brian--despite the fact that he was the school’s golden boy, despite the fact that he could do pretty much everything, he always had that part of him that liked to rely on Jae, liked to lean on Jae when he was afraid. 

“Yeah, fine,” Jae assents, picking the gun up and aiming carefully so that the piercing sits between the two moles on Brian’s earlobe, to keep them safe--he loves those moles, never wants them disappear. “It’ll hurt but it’s nothing that you can’t handle.”

“Count to three.” Brian closes his eyes in anticipation.

“One, two--” Jae fires the earring and in one shot it goes through the soft flesh of Brian’s earlobe into the clasp on the other side. “--done.”

“What the fuck--” Brian blinks in shock, the sting just starting to hit him,

“You okay?” Jae asks softly, putting the gun down and walking over to look at Brian. 

“Yeah,” Brian says, nodding, finally recuperating from the . “It stings but--but it isn’t so bad.”

Jae grins. “Toldja.” 

“How do I look?”  Brian asks, blinking up at Jae in a way that Jae knows means he’s trying hard not to cry from the sting of the piercing. 

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Jae says, finding the courage to be bold enough and wipe at the tears brimming over Brian’s eyes, threatening to fall. “But you look so cool.” 

They walk to the mirror, then, standing side-by-side, both of them thinking the same thing--Jae enjoying the way that the earring Brian got was a small, silver cross stud, making it look almost like they’re matching, like they’re a buy-one-take-one-deal, Brian loving the way that Jae’s pale blonde hair goes with the silver that he’d experimented on his own hair with. 

“Verdict?” Brian asks, then, his own verdict already apparent in the way that he can’t stop grinning.

Jae smiles, slinging an arm over Brian’s shoulder. 

“There. Now it’s perfect.”


	3. Chocolates For You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The only one that matters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is based off of this particular panel: https://twitter.com/2basc0/status/1016865744401895424

Jae’s hands are basically soaked to the bone with sweat by the time that Brian gets to the swingset in the old playground where they used to play as kids. He’s still wearing his vest from the convenience store, his expression the one he always has on when he comes from his part-time job: halfway between pissed off and bored, but his face lights up a the sight of Jae.

Jae’s heart jumps, does a somersault, both relieved and as scared as ever.

It’s Valentine’s Day and also a week before Senior prom and Jae feels stupid--really, actually, stupid for the first time in all the time that they’ve been friends, in all the time that he’s been in love with Brian, because in the paperbag next to him are the most cliche things that he’s ever bought: chocolates in a heart-shaped box, a rose with red string tied to its stem. It doesn’t help that earlier, he’d seen Brian giving away chocolates that someone had given him, stuffing a bouquet of roses from some guy trying to ask him to prom into his locker.

Brian Kang is the most attractive guy on campus and doesn’t date, is perpetually unavailable, his mind on bigger things--that’s the rule.

Jae is hoping to be the exception. 

“Hey,” Brian says, sitting in the swing next to him. “What’s up?” 

Jae grins, trying not to let his nervousness show.

“Well--um. I’m okay. How was your day?”

Brian shrugs. “You know how it goes. Boss is a jerk but whatever. I’m just glad I’m out of there now, chillaxing with you.” 

Jae nods. “Okay. Okay. Okay, here I go.”

Brian tilts his head thoughtfully. “Are you okay?” 

“Um,” Jae says, wiping his palms on his jeans. “Sort of? Well. Okay. Before I start, I need you to promise me something--”

Brian blinks. “--are we making a deal with the devil or something? A creepy blood pact?”

Jae flicks at his ear, his piercing taken out for work, the hole between his two moles always something that Jae’s fond of seeing. 

“I’m serious.” 

“Fine. I promise.”

“You don’t even know what it is yet.” 

“I trust you.” 

“Fine,” Jae says. “Okay. It’s hard for me to say this so I need you to just please not interrupt me--”

“--okay--”

“--there you go.”

“Fine, starting now.” 

“Okay,” Jae starts, picking up the paper bag and taking the box of chocolates, the rose out. “I know you got a lot of these already--and they’re cheap and it was just bought on the way and I know that it’s cliche but I really wanted you to know--I mean--I wanted to say, our--this--our friendship--it’s--thanks for hanging out with someone as lame as me all these years when clearly you could’ve been with someone cooler but also I’ve been wanting to ask you out to prom and I’ve been in love with you all my life--um. Okay. Yeah.”

Brian smiles, then, stands up, and for a moment, Jae is sure that he’s getting ready to leave, getting ready to walk out. 

“Can I say something now?” 

“Please. I’m dying.” 

“First of all,” Brian says, pulling a smaller heart-shaped box of chocolates from his vest pocket and handing it to Jae. “I’ll never forgive you for beating me to it. Second of all, you’re not lame at all and I would love to go to prom with you and have been in love with  _ you  _ forever. Third of all, I don’t care how cliche a heart-shaped box of chocolates might be because turns out I’ve got your heart and that’s all that matters.”

“Bri--”

“--Jae,” Brian whispers, leaning down until their noses brush against each other. 

The sunset glow comes in, burnishing the moment in gold. Both of their hearts are pounding, both of them having waited so long to have this moment again--but this time, they know what to do, this time, Jae pulls Brian in by the nape and pulls him closer and closer still until their eyes flutter shut, until their lips meet in the softest of kisses. This time, when the kiss deepens, both of them know what to do: Jae's lips parting, Brian licking softly into his mouth. The kiss no longer tastes like bubblegum, tastes only like them, like love ripened over the years. It’s a thrill--pulses racing, hairs on the backs of their arms standing; but also, it’s familiar in its own way, both of them having been here before, having wanted to return for so long without knowing how.

It's like coming home. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Twitter/CC: @teenuviel1227

**Author's Note:**

> I am currently open for commissions (7 slots left); the information is here: https://twitter.com/teenuviel1227/status/1016158507526000643


End file.
